Biotec, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Institute for Hydrobiology, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2018 Jun 12;8(1):8928. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-27292-6.
Wastewater treatment plants play an important role in the emergence of antibiotic resistance. They provide a hot spot for exchange of resistance within and between species. Here, we analyse and quantify the genomic diversity of the indicator Escherichia coli in a German wastewater treatment plant and we relate it to isolates' antibiotic resistance. Our results show a surprisingly large pan-genome, which mirrors how rich an environment a treatment plant is. We link the genomic analysis to a phenotypic resistance screen and pinpoint genomic hot spots, which correlate with a resistance phenotype. Besides well-known resistance genes, this forward genomics approach generates many novel genes, which correlated with resistance and which are partly completely unknown. A surprising overall finding of our analyses is that we do not see any difference in resistance and pan genome size between isolates taken from the inflow of the treatment plant and from the outflow. This means that while treatment plants reduce the amount of bacteria released into the environment, they do not reduce the potential for antibiotic resistance of these bacteria.
污水处理厂对抗生素耐药性的出现起着重要作用。它们为种内和种间的耐药性交换提供了一个热点。在这里，我们分析和量化了德国污水处理厂中指示性大肠杆菌的基因组多样性，并将其与分离物的抗生素耐药性联系起来。我们的结果显示出一个惊人的大泛基因组，这反映了处理厂是一个多么丰富的环境。我们将基因组分析与表型耐药性筛选联系起来，并确定与耐药表型相关的基因组热点。除了众所周知的耐药基因外，这种正向基因组学方法还产生了许多与耐药性相关的新基因，其中部分基因完全未知。我们分析的一个令人惊讶的总体发现是，我们没有看到从处理厂的进水口和出水口采集的分离物的耐药性和泛基因组大小有任何差异。这意味着，虽然处理厂减少了释放到环境中的细菌数量，但它们并没有降低这些细菌产生抗生素耐药性的潜力。
